This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park Brooklyn in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Note: archive at right.

What makes Barclays distinctive isn’t the [weathered] steel itself, then. It’s what the architect, Gregg Pasquarelli of SHoP, has done with it. This arena is the un–Madison Square Garden. Where the Garden is a drum, a huge, deadening cylinder, this building is full of swoops and curves, and Pasquarelli has tried to integrate it into the surrounding streetscape... I’m more struck by the way in which this building has a clear front at the point of the triangle, facing a new public plaza at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues that is punctuated by an elaborate new entrance to the subway... The best view of the building is when you come out of the new subway stairs onto the plaza and a huge, curving steel canopy, 85-feet deep and more than 200-feet long, whooshes out over you.

...It isn’t the extraordinary place the Gehry arena would have been, but it’s a decent and at times strong building, and not only by comparison with Madison Square Garden. It falls short in a couple of key ways, however, especially on the Flatbush Avenue side, which is marred by an unusual amount of cheap-looking reflective glass....

Corporate branding

Goldberger astutely notices the corporate branding:

If the storefronts are too discreet, some of the other commercial elements, like the huge, illuminated blue lettering reading BARCLAYS CENTER on the front and sides of the building, are the opposite. The Barclays sign in front is enormous, glaring, and garish. It’s also completely unnecessary and compromises the very structure... But there are more naming opportunities here than in a suburban synagogue...

It's completely unnecessary from a design point of view, maybe, but not from a business p.o.v. The arena is ultimately about business.The context

Goldberger closes:

You can’t discuss this building without talking about its context, and you can’t talk about its context without talking about Atlantic Yards, Bruce Ratner’s mega-project of which the arena is but the first section. This is a building designed in anticipation of the context that will surround it, not the one that’s there now, which is another way of saying it is intended as the centerpiece of a slew of apartment towers, and is obviously indifferent to the brownstone texture of Brooklyn streets and neighborhoods.
Atlantic Yards is a long and difficult story, and I will not argue whether or not the city will be better off for it. But construction on the first tower is soon to begin, and then there will be more. The first towers will be the closest to the arena, and it’s hard to know at this point how they will change the arena. Barclays Center surrounded by towers won’t loom up as a large, strange shape, as it does now. Yet it’s hard to believe that its architecture will be improved by being tightly framed by high-rise buildings. What is certain is that the arena we see now, sitting by itself at one of Brooklyn’s most famous intersections, is not what we will see for very long.

I will not argue whether or not the city will be better off for it.

C'mon, if Goldberger has the sense to recognize that the project is "indifferent" to the local texture, he could work toward a larger verdict... at the very least--and, yes, I know that this strays from most architecture critics' sense of their charge--it has done damage to civic discourse.

While that's part of the lawsuit, more prominent are claims of racial discrimination and retaliation, with black employees claiming repeated abuse by white supervisors, preferential treatment toward Hispanic colleagues, and retaliation in response to complaints.

Two individual supervisors, for example, are charged with referring to black employees as “black motherfucker,” “dumb black bitch,” “black monkey,” “piece of shit” and “nigger.”

Two have referred to an employee blind in one eye as “cyclops,” and “the one-eyed guy,” and an employee with a nose disorder as “the nose guy.”

There's been no official response yet though arena spokesman Barry Baum told the Daily News they, but take “allegations of this kind very seriously” and have "a zero tolerance policy for…

To supporters of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, it's a long-awaited plan for long-overlooked land. "The Atlantic Yards area has been available for any developer in America for over 100 years,” declared Borough President Marty Markowitz at a 5/26/05 City Council hearing.

Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, mused on 11/15/05 to WNYC's Brian Lehrer, “Isn’t it interesting that these railyards have sat for decades and decades and decades, and no one has done a thing about them.” Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco, in a 12/19/04 New York Times article ("In a War of Words, One Has the Power to Wound") described the railyards as "an empty scar dividing the community."

But why exactly has the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard never been developed? Do public officials have some responsibility?

At right is a photo of a poster spotted in Hasidic Williamsburg right. Clearly there's an event scheduled at the Barclays Center aimed at the Haredi Jewish community (strict Orthodox Jews who reject secular culture), but the lack of English text makes it cryptic.

The website Matzav.com explains, Protest Against Israeli Draft of Bnei Yeshiva Rescheduled for Barclays Center:
A large asifa to protest the drafting of bnei yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel into the Israeli army that had been set to take place this month will instead be held on Sunday, 17 Sivan/June 11, at the Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn, NY.
So attendees at a big gathering will protest an apparent change of policy that will make it much more difficult for traditional Orthodox Jewish students--both Hasidic (who follow a rebbe) and non-Hasidic (who don't)--to get deferments from the draft. Comments on the Yeshiva World website explain some of the debate.

First mentioned in April, the Atlantic Yards project in Atlanta is moving ahead--and has the potential to nudge Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn further down in Google searches.

According to a 5/30/17 press release, Hines and Invesco Real Estate Announce T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards:
Hines, the international real estate firm, and Invesco Real Estate, a global real estate investment manager, today announced a joint venture on behalf of one of Invesco Real Estate’s institutional clients to develop two progressive office projects in Atlanta totalling 700,000 square feet. T3 West Midtown will be a 200,000-square-foot heavy timber office development and Atlantic Yards will consist of 500,000 square feet of progressive office space in two buildings. Both projects are located on sites within Atlantic Station in the flourishing Midtown submarket.
Hines will work with Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture (HPA) as the design architect for both T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards. DLR Group will be t…

Pacific Park Brooklyn is seriously delayed, Forest City Realty Trust said yesterday in a news release, which further acknowledged that the project has caused a $300 million impairment, or write-down of the asset, as the expected revenues no longer exceed the carrying cost.

The Cleveland-based developer, parent of Brooklyn-based Forest City Ratner, which is a 30% investor in Pacific Park along with 70% partner/overseer Greenland USA, blamed the "significant impairment" on an oversupply of market-rate apartments, the uncertain fate of the 421-a tax break, and a continued increase in construction costs.

While the delay essentially confirms the obvious, given that two major buildings have not launched despite plans to do so, it raises significant questions about the future of the project, including:if market-rate construction is delayed, will the affordable h…

Real Estate Weekly, reporting on trends in Chinese investment in New York City, on 11/18/15 quoted Jim Costello, a senior vice president at research firm Real Capital Analytics:
“They’re typically building high-end condos, build it and sell it. Capital return is in a few years. That’s something that is ingrained in the companies that have been coming here because that’s how they’ve grown in the last 35 years. It’s always been a development game for them. So they’re just repeating their business model here,” he said.
When I read that last November, I didn't think it necessarily applied to Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, now 70% owned (outside of the Barclays Center and B2 modular apartment tower), by the Greenland Group, owned significantly by the Shanghai government.
A majority of the buildings will be rentals, some 100% market, some 100% affordable, and several--the last several built--are supposed to be 50% market/50% subsidized. (See tentative timetable below.)Selling development …

Click on graphic to enlarge. This is post-dated to stay at the top of the blog. It will be updated as announced configurations change and buildings launch. The August 2014 tentative configurations proposed by developer Greenland Forest City Partners will change, and the project is already well behind that tentative timetable.